INTERNET TIMELINE 1969 Defense Department commissions ARPANET to promote networking research. 1974 Bob Kahn and Vint Cerf publish paper which specifies protocol for data networks. 1981 NSF provides seed money for CSNET (Computer Science NETwork) to connect U.S. computer science departments. 1982 Defense Department establishes TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol) as standard. 1984 Number of hosts (computers) connected to the Internet breaks 1,000. 1986 NSFNET and 5 NSF-funded supercomputer centers created. NSFNET backbone is 56 kilobits/second. 1989 Number of hosts breaks 100,000. 1991 NSF lifts restrictions on commercial use of the Internet. High Performance Computing Act, authored by then-Senator Gore, is signed into law. World Wide Web software released by CERN, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics. 1993 President Clinton and Vice President Gore get e-mail addresses. Mosaic, a graphical "Web browser" developed at the NSF-funded National Center for Supercomputing Applications, is released. Traffic on the World Wide Web explodes. 1994 White House goes on-line with "Welcome to the White House." 1995 U.S. Internet traffic now carried by commercial Internet service providers. 1996 Number of Internet hosts reaches 12.8 million. President Clinton and Vice President Gore announce "Next Generation Internet" initiative. [Source: Hobbes' Internet Timeline, v. 2.5]